Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Aqua Storm

She sighed and moved on, past a flight of plush-carpeted stairs kept off limits for now by showy red-velvet ropes—the entrance to the Sultan’s Palace Theater, where Max had performed. Finally she turned down a nondescript hallway, slipping with relief into the hotel’s functional areas. Her goal was the offices of Brad Mitchellson, head PR honcho.

The outer office sported the usual chaos: piles of printed matter occupied every flat surface, including vast portions of the floor and all chair seats.

“You here to see Brad?” the receptionist asked crisply. The only tip-off that this was Las Vegas were her false eyelashes and dagger-length faux fingernails.

Temple’s nod resulted in a quick buzz. Mitchellson soon burst through the ajar inner-office door like a warm puppy.

“Temple! Come in. Glad to have you working on this. Great of you to substitute on such short notice. We’re in a mess,” he finished, leading her into his only slightly less well-papered office. He whisked a stack of brochures from a chair seat so she could sit.

“By ‘mess’ do you mean the usual”—she gestured at the surroundings as she gratefully slung her tote bag to the floor—“or the killing?”

“Oh, God.” He sat.

Like most PR types, his personality was genial and attractive, but today his tie looked like it had never been decently knotted and his short brown razor-cut showed the rumpling of harried fingers. He gestured at the green squiggles on his personal-computer screen.

“Trying to outline a new strategy: Life After Death, so to speak. Here’s the week’s schedule.”

Temple took it, glad to have hard data in hand. “So Monday’s killing occurred well before the weekend competition?”

“Monday was the first day we had acts scheduled to come in, to start rehearsing and cueing the tech staff. We were starting to line up media exposure, too, ahead of time. Only we got more than we wanted.”

“But the choreographed PR isn’t needed until the weekend—Friday through Sunday?”

“Right. And we attracted a lot of early interest before Crawford Buchanan even got the job.”

“I can imagine,” Temple murmured, paging through eight-by-ten black-and-whites—a stunning array of the bare and the beautiful of both sexes. “Quite a variety of acts here.”

“This began as a female-only stripper’s get-together and contest, but times have changed. Now we have a modest men’s competition and some novelty categories, including Loving Couples, a thing named Over-Sexty, as we call it, even Bods of a Feather, to cover animal acts.”

Temple studied a photograph of an excessively long snake enhancing the anatomically impossible position of a female stripper. “Does the SPCA sanction that?”

Brad smiled as she flashed the photo, looking relaxed for the first time. “No problem. Our only protesters are the usual Holy Rollers and feminists. We welcome them. You know how calling something sin gets the press out in droves.”

“Indeedy. God's gift to the struggling PR person. What about the murder, Brad?”

He shrugged beige-shirted shoulders. “You know the routine better than I do, after the ABA thing. Cops underfoot. Mucho interviewing. The strippers are shocked, of course, and they were all nervous to begin with. Winning a Rhinestone G-string means something in this business. Some contestants have rehearsed for months. These people put everything they have into coming up with a mind-boggling act.”

“So I see,” Temple commented, “but I didn’t think it was minds strippers were out to boggle.”

“You still have problems with the ambience?”

“Call it a middle-class hang-up. What's the difference between a bare-breasted show girl wearing a G-string and most of an ostrich—and a stripper? Why do I feel that the subtle sexual tease of a nightclub show is classier than the frank titillation of a strip joint?” Temple's hands hit the top of his desk in concert. “I’m going to use this assignment to find out. I'll interview the competitors, work up some angles on how normal they are, where they come from—geographically and mentally.”

Brad eyed her cautiously from under an appealingly dislodged lock of brown hair. “You going to ask about the murder?”

Temple shook her head. “Only if they want to bring it up. It’s none of my business. We’re all better off putting this behind us.”

“I hope you can convince the local media of that.” Brad swooped a fan of papers into one pile. “The murder made the wire services, too. Here are the releases I’d hammered out before the competition people hit town. Buchanan didn’t have a chance to put anything in writing. How’s his heart, by the way?”

“Hard as ever,” Temple muttered before giving her public statement on that topic. “He seems to be recovering well,” she told Brad.

Mitchellson chuckled as he showed her out. “Probably better than you will be by next Sunday. It should be an interesting week. Ask for Lindy when you get to the ballroom area. It’s off the Sultan’s Palace.”

“I know.” Temple stuck the fat sheaf of papers in her ever-present tote bag and headed down the hall. Did she ever.

Lindy. Sounded breezy, minty, girl-next-doorsy.

“Hi,” said the person answering to that name once Temple was inside the ballroom. “I’m coordinator for WHOOPE, a strippers association.”

“WHOOPE? How did you come up with that acronym?”

Lindy made a wry face. “The same way we have to do our jobs. We really had to bust our butts, and bump and grind it out. WHOOPE stands for—are you ready?—We Have an Organization Of Professional Ecdysiasts.”

“It should really be WHAOOPE,” Temple had to point out, “but who’s going to argue?”

“Right. And the WHOOPEs are all glad you’re doing this after all. We liked your Guthrie Theater background. It lends class to our annual endeavor. This”—she gestured at the roomful of leotard-clad women playing with exotic bits of costuming, props and their own spinal alignment—“is theater.”

Lindy shot sleek, airheaded stripper stereotypes from hell to Sheboygan. Her cigarette-roughened voice emitted from a buxom brunette frame clad in an oversized Virginia Slims sweatshirt and black stirrup leggings that disappeared into dirty white jogging shoes of no particularly chic manufacture... in a word, Ked tennies. She gestured with strong, corded hands that ended in unvarnished fingernails clipped to sickle-moon tips.

Temple eyed the assemblage, and the scurrying, blue-jeaned tech men brushing unconcernedly past straining flank and fanny.

“Theater,” she repeated obediently. That was how Max had always described magic shows. Just theater.

“Would you like to meet one of our celebrity judges?”

“Doesn’t the competition begin Saturday night?”

“Yeah, but this judge hit town early. She’s making a movie about a stripper, and the film crew is getting canned background shots while she soaks up ‘atmosphere.’ ” Temple gingerly threaded her way over the thick cables veining the floor. At least they obscured the vomitous pattern of the carpeting.

Metal folding chairs sat at odd angles all around the room. Some were faced together so long-stemmed dancers could put up their warmer-wrapped legs. Only one chair was a zebra-pattern upholstered bastard Egyptian number dragged in from the lobby.

On the clashing zigzags of black and beige posed a woman with air-whipped, ash blond hair and a pert little Barbie face on a long, slender neck. Temple rapidly took in her outfit: an off-the-shoulder cowl-collared pink angora top and white leather miniskirt that lived up to its name more than any patch of hide she had ever seen. Then, omigod, pink pearlized patent leather ankle boots with four-inch heels that could only have come from a fifties-vintage Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog!